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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoEamon Queeney | DispatchRob Martin, director of events for Live Technologies — which produces the staging, lights and sound for the Arnold events — mops the stage at the Greater Columbus Convention Center one more time in preparation for the start of the Arnold Fitness Expo.

After all, it’s not like they’ve never done it before, said Brent LaLonde, spokesman for the
Arnold events: “It really is kind of amazing to watch the space transform.”

The space is nearly 151,000 square feet of Halls C and D in the Greater Columbus Convention
Center at 400 N. High St. that will house about 840 booths. The Arnold added about 100 booths this
year to what already was the largest expo of its kind in the country.

The expansion means that martial arts and other competitions in Hall C have lost some mat space.
But the demand from vendors is so great that organizers probably could have sold 100 more spaces,
LaLonde said.

At least 35,000 visitors are expected to pass through each day until the expo closes on Sunday
evening.

For months, truckloads of displays have been rolling into an East Side warehouse. And from
Wednesday afternoon through last night, hundreds of people made nothing short of a small city out
of them.

Yesterday morning, way in the back of the big hall, hidden by 700 chairs that were still stacked
in columns and by 132 rolls of carpet that by today are lining the aisles, Rob Martin mopped the
main stage. Then he swept it. And then he mopped it again.

As director of events for Live Technologies — which produces the staging, lights and sound for
the Arnold events — Martin worked almost unnoticed as the rest of the convention center buzzed
around him.

“It will seem like we clean this stage a million times before the weekend is done,” Martin
said.

Yesterday, the air inside the hall was pungent with spray paint, Armor All and bleach. Today, it
will be a sea of bodies that smell of perfume, coconut tanning oil, testosterone and sweat.

Pat Lanzillo, who sells custom-designed workout gear with his wife, has been coming from Fort
Lauderdale to the Arnold for 20 years. Yesterday, his mannequins were naked, and piles of yoga
pants remained folded in plastic tubs.

“It will all get done,” Lanzillo said with a confident shrug.

All day yesterday, men with power tools built complicated displays. Others assembled cages
inside of which people will try to deadlift their own body weight.

Women flicked their box-cutters like whips as they sliced open thousands of boxes of protein
bars that by today are all neatly stacked for customers to sample.

So many forklifts delivered pallets of vitamin-infused water and kettle bells and sports bras
that their beeping horns made the whole place sound like a big-city intersection at rush hour. Men
climbed 30-foot ladders to hang lights, and others leaned out of cherry-pickers to hang banners
from the ceiling.